


Red Wolf, Werewolf

by JessicaMDawn



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Divergent Universe, F/F, Hunters, M/M, but everything after that is DU, red wolf, the Hale fire is mentioned, werewolves can become full wolves during the full moon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaMDawn/pseuds/JessicaMDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek moves back to Beacon Hills with his sisters when news comes of his uncle's death. Besides being a werewolf, Derek now has to deal not only with the talkative son of the sheriff that he is quickly developing feelings for, but also the strange red wolf that hangs around on the preserve without a pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Werewolves can become full wolves during the full moon.
> 
> Honestly I wrote this because I discovered red wolves were a thing and I loved them.

 

 

Graphic courtesy of [Lunarflare14](../../../users/Lunarflare14)

 

* * *

 

Derek was running through the woods, the full moon high in the sky above, when he saw it. An unfamiliar wolf.

Laura, the alpha, was a large but sleek wolf with fur a mixture of grays and light browns. Cora was thin, smaller than Laura by half, and the color of desert sand blended with rich soil. Derek himself was bigger than his alpha, with fur so dark it looked black in the night but cocoa brown in the sun except for a rust colored patch on his chest. This new wolf was not of the Hale pack.

It didn't smell like a Hale. It didn't look like a Hale. But it was in Hale territory. It didn't smell like a werewolf, but werewolf or not, it had no business being here.

Derek abandoned his free run and took off after the unfamiliar canine. It bounded over fallen logs, mounds of earth, and roots as if it knew the land. Derek's size gave him enough edge to take away any advantage the other wolf had though. He could step over some things the other wolf had to hop to clear.

Despite his werewolf speed, it took Derek fifteen minutes of darting around trees and over rocks to finally tackle the other wolf to the ground. It yelped at the contact and went down without a fight. Now that it wasn't moving, Derek could see it better in the moonlight through the branches.

It was burnt red all over with a white underside and a sprinkling of medium brown fur down the center of its back. Derek stood over it and bared his teeth, ears flicking back. The red wolf rolled over onto its back, baring its belly and neck to Derek in a show of submission and trust that caught him off guard. Then its lips pulled back as it panted out a sound not dissimilar to laughter.

Derek's ears flattened and he growled. Wolves didn't laugh.

The red wolf stopped laughing and bent its head to gaze up at him. Its eyes were a deep brown color that drew to mind the hot cocoa Laura made for him in winter or the fertile earth of the forest. There was a smile hidden in those eyes that a wolf's mouth could not form. Its tail thumped against the ground and it pawed at Derek's chest like a young pup would.

Play with me.

Derek snorted and growled again, a low noise of warning. The red wolf let out a snort of its own, mocking him, and pawed at him again.

Play with me.

Derek had no intention of playing. This wolf was on Hale territory. It wasn't part of his pack. He wouldn't play with some random wolf in the woods just because it was the full moon. It wasn't pack.

The red wolf wiggled around on its back, its legs hitting Derek's with each roll, and its tongue hung out the side its mouth. With a mischievous glint in its eyes the red wolf pawed at Derek again, a final request for play time. Then, in a blink, it had rolled back onto its feet and darted out from under him.

Before Derek really knew what he was doing, he was giving chase. The wolf abruptly changed course, sliding behind a wide tree. When Derek turned to follow, he found the wolf waiting for him. It tackled him to the ground, its small frame barely enough to knock Derek over. Its teeth latched on to Derek's back and gnawed playfully, again like a puppy. Derek kicked at it and rolled them over, grabbed the red wolf's neck gently and shaking it. The red wolf yipped happily and returned the gesture, then rolled out of Derek's grasp and invited Derek to run again.

This wolf wasn't pack. Derek shouldn't be playing with an unfamiliar wolf. He should find his sisters and run with them tonight, with the moon full above them and making their emotions run wild.

With a short bark, Derek jumped up and lunged at the red wolf. It barked back, its voice not as high as Derek had expected out of its small frame, then laughed again. And so they took off running again, chasing and biting and playing, with the light of the stars and the moon shining down upon them.

 

 

 

...

...

Derek was exhausted. It felt like he morphed down the stairs instead of walking, and then he was pouring himself a cup of coffee and sitting at the kitchen table without really taking in what he was doing. Only after he was halfway done with his coffee did he notice Laura sitting across from him at the table. She had a bowl of banana chocolate grain cereal in front of her, half eaten, but had abandoned it in order to level a hard stare at her brother.

"What?" he asked, glad his voice didn't croak the way it felt it should.

Her hazel eyes narrowed. "You ditched us last night. On our first full moon since coming back home, you left. Why?"

Why? Derek took another long sip of his coffee while he thought. Why had he split from them? He remembered they were running together. Then Laura and Cora had taken off after a rabbit or something and Derek had...he'd just kept running, in the opposite direction.

With a shrug he answered, "I didn't feel like eating fast food."

Laura frowned. "Derek, this isn't a time for jokes. We were really worried about you." She shook her head, dark brown hair flowing easily around her shoulders. "If someone had caught you, shot you? Or if you had gone into town, or just come across a hapless hiker, and lost control for even a minute? Derek that would be it. You would be gone. And I couldn't bare that. Neither could Cora. Not now."

Not now. Not with Uncle Peter's funeral only days behind them.

He sighed and looked down into his cup, now almost empty of coffee. "I know. But I didn't see any people. I kept to the deep woods all night."

For a long moment, silence reigned in the apartment. Then Laura let out a deep sigh and spooned up some more cereal. "I suppose it's alright, this time." It was forgiveness and a warning all in one. She didn't want him running off on his own again.

 

 

 

...

...

Cora started classes at the local college a week later, Criminal Justice track. Laura got a job at the local library, just like back in New York. Derek got a job at the auto shop in town. They did their best to appear normal to absolutely everyone, even themselves.

Except sometimes Laura used her sense of hearing to listen in on conversations and heartbeats in the library and catch kids trying to be sneaky on the computers or stealing books. Cora was more athletic than her classmates, stronger, faster, recovered more quickly from attack. And Derek could lift a car to get at a problem spot instead of adjusting the machinery for a difference of a few centimeters.

So they really weren't normal at all, but at least there were no hunters in town, and at least they kept their differences small and easily overlooked.

 

 

 

...

...

The next full moon, Derek took off before Laura or Cora were home in the afternoon. He spent the waning hours of the day wandering in the deeper forest, keeping an eye out for the red wolf he'd seen last month. He couldn't find anything - not a den or scent or tracks.

Then the moon rose and Derek gave himself over to the transformation. He didn't have to, it's not a requirement as a wolf. He could stay at home watching TV or go grocery shopping if he wanted to tonight, but he would rather take a run. He was aggravated from wasting his afternoon searching for an animal he obviously hallucinated and needed to burn off the tension before he could go home and chew out Cora for walking too heavy or something equally as small.

Only five minutes had passed when Derek spotted a blur of red fur in the pale light of night and he stopped dead in his tracks. The red wolf's ears perked up and it jolted to a smooth stop, head twisting sideways to look at Derek. Immediately, the wolf's tail began to wag back and forth, slow but deliberate. It bounded over to him and bumped his cheek with its muzzle in an overly familiar gesture of hello. And while Derek should feel offended - they barely knew each other, they weren't family or friends - he felt himself loosen up instead. The tension in his body drained away.

He hadn't made the wolf up. It was real.

The red wolf loped several feet away and then turned around and dropped its head down between its front paws, leaving its butt in the air. It made a sound between a bark and yip, something Derek couldn't imitate, and wagged its tail. This time, Derek didn't waste any time hurrying to play along. He may have been tired the next day after last time, but he had also never had so much fun.

 

 

 

...

...

"So," Laura began as she dished out dinner two nights later. She gave Derek a noticeably smaller portion of chicken than she gave Cora or herself, but he didn't dare complain. He'd run off on his own again with no warning, disobeying his alpha.

"So?" Cora asked when her sister didn't continue.

Laura didn't answer until she was seated at the table with them. "How's everything going?" she asked. "We've been here just over a month. Has anything interesting happened?"

Cora rolled her eyes. "It's Beacon Hills," she said. "It's a quiet town where nothing ever happens."

That wasn't quite true, they all knew. After all, their family had burned to death in this town. But that was ten years ago, and nothing nearly that exciting had happened in this town since. That was another bonus to coming back.

Laura rolled her eyes and began cutting her food. "Come on, nothing interesting has happened in class?"

Cora's mouth clicked shut almost audibly and Derek turned his attention from his chicken to his little sister. There was a faint blush on her cheeks and her heart was beating a tad too fast to be considered normal.

"Cora?"

She glared at him. "What? It's nothing. Nothing interesting has happened."

Now Laura was giving her an almost leering smile. "Aw, Cora, come on. Don't be like that."

"There's nothing. I go to class, the teachers drone, and then I come home. That's it," the youngest Hale insisted. It was futile. Both her older siblings could tell she was lying.

"You don't find any of your classes interesting?" Derek asked. "Maybe you should switch majors."

Cora growled, a noise better fit for a wolf than a human. "Alright, fine. Something interesting." She glared at her meat. "There's...There's a really annoying guy in one of my classes."

While it was obvious that hadn't been what made her blush, both Derek and Laura agreed via a look to let their little sister get away with the change of subject. For now.

"Oh?" Laura prodded.

"Yes." Cora sighed, put upon, and explained. "He's apparently the son of someone at the police station, so he already knows a lot of the material. And in class he's always raising his hand and asking if there's any way to do this or that without it being illegal or if there's a loophole to some law to allow someone to get away with something. And every 'hypothetical situation' either sounds like he came up with it right on the spot it's so crazy, or like he's been planning it since he was in kindergarten and is just fine tuning the specifics."

Laura wore a small smile. "That sounds interesting. Are you sure he wants to be a police man and not a con man?"

Cora groaned and stuffed a huge chunk of chicken in her mouth, then spoke around it. "He doesn't want to be either, that's the annoying part. He's in the class willingly, even though it has nothing to do with his major."

"What's his major?" Derek asked. He was so glad he wasn't taking college courses anymore. He hated school.

"I have no idea and I don't care," Cora retorted after swallowing. "Now can we switch subjects? This guy literally makes my class days hell and I don't want him ruining my dinner too."

Laura laughed. "Maybe you could figure out what kind of car he drives. Then if he comes to Derek for a fix, Derek can get revenge for you."

Derek tried to ignore the way Cora seemed to actually be considering it.

 

 

 

...

...

A week later, Derek met Cora's annoying classmate. He only knew this was the same guy from Cora's class because she had said he drove the only blue Jeep in town, and the wrecked vehicle was definitely an eye catching pale blue old Jeep.

"And yeah, then this deer comes out of absolutely nowhere and of course hitting it would be really bad, right? So I swerve to avoid this I swear to God fourteen point buck and I not only ran into a pot hole, tearing one of my tires completely off, gone, took a trip to Monte Carlo wish I could join it, but then I like, hydroplaned without water, right off the road and into a tree. A pair of them, actually."

The guy looked barely legal, his hair artfully messy and barely long enough to be so, with dark brown eyes and freckles. He was wearing plaid, _plaid_ , and a t-shirt underneath. His car had been brought in via tow truck about eight minutes ago and Derek had watched the young man tumble in an uncoordinated mess from the truck, only saved from a pitiful face plant on the asphalt by his grip on the truck door.

The Jeep was halfway to totaled, but fixable, with dents and scrapes all over it, not to mention a few missing parts - like a tire. It looked more like someone had taken a metal bat to it, a set of keys or something else sharp, and then taken the front passenger tire and let the air out of the other three. So the story Derek had been listening to for the past eight minutes was complete bull, but Derek had to give this kid props - his heart barely skipped a beat the entire time, his voice was confident, and he wasn't sweating. He was an Class A bullshiter.

"Are you done?" Derek asked in a monotone when the guy paused to breathe.

He nodded. "Yeah, yep." He took a breath. "It was the single most terrifying moment of my life."

And that was an outright lie Derek could've heard a mile away. Only now did the kid seem at all nervous that Derek wouldn't believe his false story. Only when he was done did the look on his face seem to beg Derek not to question it. Just fix the car and move on.

Derek sighed. "I'll tell you what," he began. "I'll fix it good at new, with a discount even, if you can show me where the accident happened."

Heart jumping, the guy nodded. "Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. I can...totally do that."

Derek rolled his eyes. "What's your name?"

Hunching his shoulders and looking up through his lashes, the guy said, "Stiles." And strangely, that was when his heartbeat and scent were the most scared.

 

 

 

...

...

After Derek drove Stiles out into the middle of nowhere and Stiles pointed out a pot hole and parts of a broken headlight on the ground, Derek followed through on his deal. He still didn't believe a deer or trees were the cause of the damage, and he had no idea what Stiles was doing that far out in the woods in the first place, but it wasn't his job to worry about the kid so he let it drop.

But after that, he started seeing Stiles every day. He'd told Stiles the repairs for his Jeep could take a week at least, probably two, but the younger male showed up at the shop every afternoon after his classes to hang out and watch Derek work - even when it wasn't on his car. And Derek learned firsthand why Cora thought he was annoying: he never stopped talking.

"So then I tell Scott it's pink eye and he doesn't believe me, right? And so I asked him if he'd been playing with the class hamster before he rubbed his eyes and he says 'yeah, how did you know?' and I'm like 'Cause you've got pink eye, numb nuts.' Of course I didn't say 'numb nuts' because we were eight. I think I called him poop face or something because it fit the situation and it made me laugh for six minutes, no joke."

"It wasn't even my fault, but of course the deputy didn't believe me when I told them it was a guy with two arms and hair, not me, so they booked me. I mean, I wasn't in handcuffs, which frankly is surprising considering the amount of times I've found myself on the inside of a jail cell, but they stuck me in the back of the cruiser and drove me all the way back to the station. Then as soon as they locked me in the cell they got a call about someone pulling the exact same stink bomb stunt at a house two streets over from where they picked me up. Even when they found the guy, proving me completely right, they didn't let me out of the cell. I honestly think the cops here like seeing me behind bars which, ok, to each their own, but I'd rather not be part of some of their creepy fantasies thanks, especially not since I was only fifteen at the time and most of them are old enough to be my parents. Ew."

"There was a time when Scott and I, okay mostly I, decided it would be a great idea to go fishing in the middle of winter. I mean, the river was almost frozen it was so cold, but we were determined. And it was worse because neither of our families fish so we didn't have any fishing rods or gear and we were just splashing around in this freezing water trying to grab fish with our bare hands. Honestly that's not even the dumbest thing I've ever done. I've gone out looking for dead bodies in the middle of the woods at night, or snuck up on cops during stakeouts, or cheated in Harris's chemistry class, god that was the worst day of my life. I don't know if you ever had chemistry with Mr. Harris while you were at school here years ago, but if you've spent more than five minutes in his vicinity you know what I'm talking about. The man is a nightmare. I swear he woke up every morning, looked himself in the mirror, and thought "Today I'm gonna make Stilinski's life hell." I know he did. I could see in his eyes. His cold, dead, heartless eyes."

"Seeing dead people is weird. It was not the most fun I've ever had at a Halloween party. Like I honestly regret drinking the punch. I must've drank a lot less than everyone else though because it wore off pretty fast and after that it wasn't too bad, cause I got to watch everyone else trip from here to Milwaukee and that was actually kind of entertaining. I mean, it meant I was running around keeping people out of the pool and dumping the punch and getting people to the bathroom all night, but I actually sort of liked that. It made me feel useful and heroic. I've also never had quite that deep a conversation with Jackson before, though I think he thought I was his mom who died in a car accident when he was a baby. I'm not even sure he remembers it because he's never brought it up, even to threaten me with castration if I told anyone."

The other guys in the auto shop joked that Derek had a puppy that kept following him to work, or that Stiles was one of many in town joining the "Derek Hale Fan Club" and that the shop was lucky no one else had decided to hang around as well. The more Stiles talked, the more Derek learned about him, and the more Derek didn't like the way his coworkers were talking about Stiles like he was a pet.

Within a week, Derek knew that Stiles had had a long standing crush on a girl named Lydia Martin but that it had faded when he turned thirteen, and that she had gone off to some prestigious university immediately after graduation; that Stiles was almost obsessive about his father eating healthy but binged on curly fries himself and often brought some with him to share with Derek whenever he took a break; and that Stiles' best friend was an asthmatic named Scott who was a mushy romantic with a lot of relationship issues, among other things.

Derek wasn't sure what to make of Stiles. He liked his silence and Stiles was noise, but after he got over the shock of just how much Stiles could talk it wasn't so bad. Derek hadn't reciprocated in any of their 'conversations' so Stiles didn't know much about him in return, but Stiles didn't seem to care. He asked questions but then quickly retracted them or started in on another story when it became clear Derek wasn't going to answer. Derek worked slower when Stiles was around too, unable to use his wolf skills to speed things along while he always had eyes watching him. So there were pros and cons to getting the Jeep repaired quickly.

He would miss the curly fries when he was done.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness! I'm amazed at the response this story has gotten so far - if not in reviews but in favorites and people following it and hits. Thank you all so much! I hope the rest of the story is just as great for you!
> 
> Also, HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to everyone, taken or single or just not interested. Hope today is wonderful for you!

The day after the Jeep was fixed - after the slowest payment, thank you, bye, drive away Derek had yet experienced working at the shop - Derek went running in the woods out to where Stiles' Jeep had supposedly wrecked.

The broken mirror was gone and there was no evidence anything had ever happened there. Considering Stiles claimed he hadn't shown his dad where he wrecked, and the slow clean up time infamous in Beacon Hills, that meant someone else had been out there to clear the evidence. Now Derek was even more sure that Stiles hadn't wrecked, but had been somehow attacked but uninjured.

Derek didn't know why he cared so much. Maybe Stiles pissed off some guys at the college and they took revenge out on his Jeep. It could be that simple. But Derek wanted to know who had done it and to...to get revenge or something. He wasn't sure. All he knew was that he felt strangely protective of the younger man and he couldn't explain why.

Following the scent of unfamiliar humans, Derek began jogging through the woods. There were two of them, winding a bit into the woods and then running parallel to the road. When the road split, one way to the next town and the other to a power plant, the scents turned toward the plant. Derek stopped at the fork and simply stared down the visible road.

There were several more unknown scents here, not workers at the plant because they would have been driving, not walking in the woods. If there was a large group out attacking people on back roads, Derek didn't want to handle them alone. Werewolf or not, he was still only one person. If he told Laura about it then maybe they could come back. Laura was stronger, and they might bring Cora. Three werewolves made the odds a lot nicer.

Derek walked back toward town rather than ran, taking his time to think. How would he talk about this to Laura? The annoying guy from Cora's class brought his Jeep in for major repairs two and a half weeks ago and it was obvious he'd been attacked so Derek had driven out into the middle of nowhere and followed a scent trail leading toward the nearby power plant. She would question his motives and Derek wouldn't have proper answers which would lead to one of two possible situations: Laura would say No it wasn't important and Derek would end up storming the plant on his own because he couldn't let it go or Laura would assume the most embarrassing things and agree to help but never stop grinning lecherously at him.

Derek blinked out of his thoughts and saw a familiar red wolf standing at the top of the incline he was climbing, staring at him. When it noticed it had his attention, the wolf tilted its head to the side and its tail swept back and forth a few times.

"It's you," Derek said into the quiet forest. This was the first time he'd seen it in daylight, the first time it hadn't been a full moon. "I suppose this proves you aren't a werewolf."

The wolf made a curious noise and walked slowly down the hill to stand in front of Derek. It nosed at his hand, then his thigh, then whined and grabbed his fingers with its mouth, tugging gently.

"It's me," Derek assured the wolf. "Same inside, different outside." The tugging continued, more insistently than before. "What?"

The red wolf released his hand, which had light scratching from its teeth but no blood drawn, and scurried back to the top of the incline. There it stopped and looked back at him, ears low and head bent. It looked from Derek to the area in front of it, then back again. It wanted Derek to follow it.

"Ok."

As soon as he was level with the wolf, it let out a quiet yip of a noise and hurried off, leaving Derek to follow at its heels. In human form, Derek was slower than the red wolf and it stopped several times to make sure he was still following. It wasn't until after they were well past where Stiles' Jeep had been damaged that the wolf stopped running altogether.

Derek looked around but there was nothing special about this area of the woods. It lacked any definite smell of people but huge expanses of the forest were like that. Turning his head to the side, Derek spotted a sign a few dozen feet away. Even with it parallel to him, unable to see its text, Derek knew what it said.

_Private Property_

They were on Hale property. Sure, it was the outer reaches of the large plot his family owned, but the wolf had stopped as soon as they were across the property line. There was no way that was a coincidence.

"You're pretty smart," Derek said as he faced the wolf again. "For an animal," he added.

The wolf barked and growled at him, dropping into its familiar playful pose - butt in the air. Derek shook his head.

"I'm not a wolf right now. We can't play."

Another bark and the red wolf jumped at him. It's small body meant that Derek barely took a step back when it hit him, paws on his chest and head near his diaphragm. It nosed at every spot on Derek's abs it could reach. Derek grabbed it by the nose and it snorted and looked up at him, muzzle resting on Derek's body.

"That tickles," Derek informed it monotonously. It barked again and then whined, stepping back and forth on its hind legs to keep from falling over, and stared at him with pleading eyes. Derek rolled his own eyes. "Fine. I'll play. But only for a little bit, I have things to do today."

With a happy yip, the red wolf pushed off from Derek's chest and bounded away, giving off a general feel of accomplishment. Derek wondered at its ability to understand him, but if anyone knew animals weren't as dumb as people made them out to be, it would be a werewolf.

When Derek didn't immediately follow, the red wolf gave him a surprisingly baleful look. Derek headed after it with a chuckle.

 

...

...

Laura didn't laugh at him or ask any questions, but she didn't say no. She didn't say yes either. The eldest Hale asked Derek to give her a few days to decide, and that was all he'd been able to get out of her.

"I'll let you know when I decide," she'd said, and ordered him not to go looking into it on his own before she had.

 

...

...

Arriving at work the next day, Derek was caught off guard by a now familiar scent. A scent which had no purpose being at the shop. If Stiles had wrecked his Jeep again this soon, Derek would give up all sympathy for him.

It turned out the smell was coming from a red hoodie bunched up on the floor in the corner of the break room. Derek stared at the offending fabric in open confusion for several long seconds. How had it gotten there? Stiles had never even been in this room.

Pulling up Stiles information on the computer was easy enough, if not exactly allowed, and within minutes Derek was lifting his phone to his ear and listening to it ring.

 _"Hello, you've reached the phone of the great and wonderful Stiles. How may I assist?"_ Stiles preached like a sales operator.

"Stiles."

Silence greeted him for a moment and then, _"Derek? Wh-hey! Never thought I'd get a call from Mr. Stolid Pants. Ey, uh, did-did you need something?"_

The whirlwind of Stiles' voice moving from surprised to excited to nervous made Derek wish they were in the same room so he could use all his senses to figure Stiles out. He frowned at the phone number blinking on the computer screen in front of him.

"You left your hoodie at the shop," he informed the other man.

There wasn't a moment's pause this time _. "Did I? I can't believe it. Ah, man, and it's the red one too, isn't it?"_

His fake surprise was telling. He'd known he left it. Or, if Laura was right about Stiles being a con man in his spare time, he might have snuck in after hours to plant it. Why did Derek like that?

"Yes. It's red."

Stiles sighed. _"Darn. That's my favorite hoodie too. You know, red's my color. Don't know why, it just seems to grow on me. So much of what I have is red."_

Except only one of Stiles' plaid over shirts had been red and red was only vaguely a color in any of the images on his t-shirts, so Derek didn't know who Stiles thought he was fooling. Derek shook his head.

"You've only worn one red shirt," Derek pointed out.

Stiles coughed. _"R-really?"_ He forcefully cleared his throat. _"Aaaannnyway...could you get it back to me? I'll be at the library this afternoon for awhile if you want to-"_

"The library's fine," Derek interrupted. Laura would be at the library. Maybe seeing Stiles and watching Derek interact with him would be enough to convince her to take action at the power plant.

 _"Cool. Totally cool. Coolio...,"_ Stiles trailed off. _"So I'll see you this afternoon at, say...five thirty? My last class gets out at five so that should be plenty of time. Well four fifty but you know professors."_

Derek nodded. "Five thirty at the library. I'll see you there."

 

...

...

As soon as he walked into the library, Laura stepped out of the back area and raised an eyebrow at him. Derek shook his head and walked toward the back of the library, where Stiles was tucked away among books on movies and film. He was wearing a thin striped blue and white plaid shirt with a white undershirt, proving Derek right about him not wearing red all the time. There was a notebook on the table before him, which he was scribbling furiously in, and a book on Miwok mythology and another on European folklore.

Derek lifted an eyebrow. "What exactly is your major?"

Stiles jumped so badly his chair toppled over backward, throwing him to the ground. "Holy shit, dude," he wheezed. "Give a little warning."

He accepted Derek's hand and used it to pull himself up to his knees, then let go so he could right the chair before standing up. Derek shrugged one shoulder.

"At least you didn't scream."

Stiles snorted as he shut his books. "I think your sister would've killed me if I made that loud of a noise in here." Derek narrowed his eyes suspiciously and it was Stiles' turn to shrug. "You look a lot alike, and she's new like you, so I assumed. Aaaand then I did a google search...and then I might have looked at some records I might or might not have been allowed to see, legally, just to make sure," he ended with shifty eyes.

Derek sighed. Con man was right. He tossed the hoodie at Stiles, catching him in the face. The clothing fell into Stiles' lap and he blinked at it.

"Hey, thanks, man," Stiles said with a bright smile. "I really would've hated to lose this. Like I said-"

"Red is your color," Derek finished for him, rolling his eyes. "You never answered my question."

Stiles narrowed his eyes at Derek in confusion for a moment, blinked twice, then let out a soft 'oh.' "Cinema Studies and Creative Writing," he said. "Double major. I got a lot of scholarship money and my dad's the sheriff, so I figure Go Big or Go Home, right?"

"You're in my sister's criminal justice class."

"Yeah," Stiles scratched his cheek, "I like to broaden my horizons. Learn new things. I'm planning on a world religions or comparative mythology course for next semester." He grinned. "What about you? You got a diploma?"

Derek frowned. "Of course." Stiles waved at him and Derek sighed again. "World Languages."

Stiles whistled but managed to keep it quiet. "A linguist. I never would've guessed," he teased. "Omelette au fromage?"

"Je préfère la saucisse et jambon omelette, en fait," Derek countered.

Stiles stared at him. Then he stared some more. Finally, a smile crept across his face until it was threatening to break his face in half. "Dude, say something else. Wait, what other languages do you know?"

"Se le olvidó su sudadera con capucha a propósito," Derek accused, even though he wasn't actually upset about it. If Stiles really had left his hoodie at the shop on purpose, like Derek was ninety-nine percent sure he had, then Stiles was also good at planning, not just at bullshitting.

"I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing you speak in foreign languages," Stiles commented, awe in his voice. "I can barely speak English."

"Is there a reason you tricked me here?" Derek asked, point blank. He heard Stiles' heart race in response.

"Tricked you? I didn't trick you," he insisted. "Tricking would imply you didn't know about it. Which obviously you do. So it can't be a trick. It's just sly suggestion." Derek raised an eyebrow and Stiles stopped babbling. "Okay, I was hoping to ask if you...you know...wanted to have...I don't know, lunch...with me...some day. Soon."

Considering Derek was typically attracted to more aggressive personalities, he strangely liked how Stiles progressively lost confidence the longer he tried to ask Derek out.

He smirked. "If you can manage not to lose any of your clothes from now on, then I think lunch is doable."

Stiles gaped at him like a fish out of water. Then he seemed to have a seizure or something because he flailed around so bad he nearly upended his chair. Again. "R-really? Like, no joke, you're really gonna have lunch with me?" he asked in a whisper yell.

"Not if you keep making that face."

Stiles disbelief morphed into a laughing smile that Derek was pleased to have caused.

 

...

...

Laura did laugh at him now, but only because he spent twenty minutes trying to pick out a shirt for a casual lunch that was also a date. Cora eventually picked one for him and wished him luck. She probably wouldn't have been so supportive if she'd known it was Stiles Derek was about to meet, but both Laura and Derek agreed it best not to tell her - at least until Derek knew if it would be a recurring thing.

 

...

...

The lunch wasn't terrible. Stiles knocked over the salt and his cup of soda and managed to throw Derek's fork to the ground from across the table, but Derek liked how flustered he got whenever he was clumsy. At first they'd been quiet, but then Stiles had launched into a story about a guy in his film class named Matt and how freaky he was. That got him talking about his favorite movies - mostly monster flicks - and Derek replied with his own - Star Wars.

"Which ones?"

"The original three."

"Of course you'd be a purist," Stiles had sighed, only to immediately agree that Derek was right.

They discussed the vices and virtues of the Skywalkers and the Sith lords and the parallels between the movies for awhile, then switched smoothly over to Star Trek. Derek didn't know as much about Star Trek, but he didn't mind just listening to Stiles talk passionately about it and how it should be used as a beacon to all current and future generations. Eventually he mentioned a creature the original crew found that was literally just a dog with a horn strapped to its head and that led him back into monster flicks and how realistic the beasts were. So their conversation eventually came full circle.

"Okay," Stiles said, abruptly cutting himself off mid-rant about the swamp thing. "I've babbled enough. I wanna know more about you. Tell me something." Derek blinked at him. "Anything."

Something about Derek. He was a werewolf. His best friend was a red wolf. He worked at an auto shop. He spoke four languages fluently. He'd just moved to Beacon Hills after spending ten years in New York. All of it was either a secret he wasn't ready to tell or something Stiles already knew.

Stiles spread his arms out across the table. "Alright, okay, alright," he said. "How about this: how about I guess? I'll come up with a suitably tragic back story for you and you let me know if I'm anywhere close, okay?"

Derek snorted. "I can't wait to hear what 'suitably tragic back story' you have for me."

With a grin, Stiles folded his hands under his chin and examined Derek through narrowed eyes. "Well...obviously your house burned in a fire when you were little, so we'll skip that part," he said quickly, averting his eyes. "I'm gonna go with...You're from a family of vampires, but obviously some form of day walker."

"Vampires?" Derek repeated with an ironic upward twitch of his lips.

Stiles nodded. "Yeah. I mean it would explain why you and your sisters are impossibly attractive. Uhhhhhhhh..." His brain seemed to have shut down momentarily, which only made Derek grin a little more. After a few seconds Stiles shook his head and snapped out of it. "Right. Um. Vampires. But you don't drink human blood, especially not in a small town like Beacon Hills. No, you feed on the wildlife in the forest. On...rabbits and squirrels and coyotes and wolves."

Derek's amusement vanished at the thought of eating the red wolf. "There aren't wolves in California, Stiles," he said, trying to shake the thought away, "so you'll have to come up with a better story."

Luckily, Stiles didn't push the subject and simply launched into another fanciful idea where Derek and his sisters were the last of a race of aliens that landed on Earth years ago to study human life, not in preparation for an invasion but as part of a peace keeping program where they had to learn about humans to decide how best to protect them. Of all the alien families, the Hales fell in love with humanity the most, so they have stayed far longer than the assignment called for.

"Except I don't like people much," Derek countered.

"You are killing me here, dude," Stiles whined, but he was smiling so Derek knew he didn't mind. "Oh well, I'll figure it out."

 

...

...

Derek got curly fries once a week at work. He could smell them coming down the road, in the Jeep that smelled of rubber and gas, that puttered and groaned its way down the asphalt, long before Stiles pulled into the parking lot. And he was always waiting by the door to the break room when Stiles stumbled into the store front, because one day he'd been hungry and impatient when Stiles showed up and when Stiles had seen him a 100-watt smile had lit his face. The idea that Derek could make someone smile like that, just by existing, was taking time to sink in.

Stiles asked Derek out for dinner twice a week and lunch once a week, always in the stuttered, unsure way he had the first time but without the cloak and dagger, as if he always expected to get shot down and was then pleasantly surprised when his offer was accepted. Derek felt irritation rankle in his stomach every time, wondering how many people had rejected Stiles in the past for him to still be this nervous.

 

...

...

The evenings when Derek didn't see Stiles were evenings he spent play hunting, fighting, and racing with the red wolf. The next full moon, Derek and the red wolf went fishing in the shallows of the river. The red wolf didn't even shake the excess water off afterward before it rolled in the dirt. Derek had to catch it and muscle it back into the water to clean off. With the way the wolf laughed, this was yet another game. Derek shoved it into deeper water with his back legs and it yelped. If Derek could have laughed in wolf form, he would have at seeing the usually nimble red wolf flail in the water and emerge looking like a drowned rat, scowling as best a wolf could.

Even with Derek in human form, the wolf treated Derek like one of its own and allowed Derek to choose what they hunted and if it was allowed to keep the prey when they caught it. The red wolf treated Derek like an alpha, or at least as if it were of a lower rank than him. Derek had never had someone do that with him before, always treated as a child and never as a leader.

The more time he spent with the red wolf, the more confident he became in his relationship with Stiles. If he could be a leader in the forest, he could take charge in his life among humans.

 

...

...

A month after that first lunch, when Stiles brought Derek curly fries at work, Derek waited until Stiles had stuffed his face and then asked "Do you want to go to dinner tomorrow?"

Curly fries scattered across the floor but Stiles didn't appear to notice, too busy staring at Derek in shock. "You're...asking _me_?" he checked. Derek nodded and waited. "Uh, sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean, my class doesn't get out until 7:45 tomorrow, but if that's okay? Then totally."

Derek nodded again and moved to grab the broom from the corner. "I'll pick you up from class."

He heard Stiles gulp from across the room.

When Derek insisted on paying for the both of them the next night, Stiles was again surprised and confused. They never paid for each other. But with an impressive eyebrow raise from Derek, Stiles let him pay for their meals. And when Derek dropped Stiles off at his house, he stopped the younger man from getting out of the car immediately.

Derek reached out and laid his hand on Stiles' neck and jaw, then leaned in slowly, slow enough that Stiles could pull back if he wanted to. He didn't. It was the first kiss Derek had shared with anyone in two years. Stiles tensed for a moment when their lips first brushed, then enthusiastically returned the kiss. Derek leaned forward over the console so that he was a little taller than Stiles and deepened the kisses. Stiles lifted his hands to grab Derek by the face, but Derek pulled away before they landed, leaving him looking dazed and disappointed.

With a smirk, Derek said, "Happy one month," and nodded toward the door to the house. The sheriff quickly let the curtain of the window drop and hide him from view.

Stiles mouthed 'one month' and then his eyes widened. "That's-Wh-what do I get for two months?"

Derek tilted his head. "I guess you'll just have to find out."

"Holy crap," Stiles breathed out, almost inaudible. He gulped and fumbled for the door handle. Only when he'd half fallen out of the car and was standing upright again did he seem to breathe properly. Leaning back into the car he said, "See you at the shop tomorrow?"

A nod. "I'll look forward to it."

He sat in the driveway long enough for Stiles to get inside, and for the sheriff to make a comment so full of innuendo that Derek could hear Stiles' blush and how he crashed into something, probably the railing for the stairs. Allowing himself a smile, Derek pulled away from the Stilinski house and drove home.

 

...

...

Laura met Derek at the fork in the road as dusk was falling. He was sitting on a nearby log when she and Cora showed up.

"I'm amazed at your patience," Cora commented, looking off in the direction of the plant. It wasn't visible from here, but they could smell and hear it. "Over a month and you haven't stormed the place yet."

"I'm not stupid," Derek shot back.

Cora rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "That's debatable. You're dating the guy who asked if there was a way to copy FBI security clearance cards without it being illegal last week."

Derek had never told them he was dating anyone, had never even said it to himself, but they knew. Of course they did.

He ignored the barb and turned to his alpha. She watched him for a moment before giving her attention to the hill and trees that hid the plant from view.

"I've been checking around," she began. "The power plant employs a lot of people from both Beacon Hills and the neighboring city of Longwood. They did just hire some new workers for temporary positions, but no one knows anything about them. Cora caught whiff of one of them in town and followed it to a guy in his forties."

"He definitely looked like a hunter," Cora broke in. "He kept an eye on all the exists in the store, wore dark clothes, and had at least four guns in his truck. And I know the bullets weren't made to take out deer."

Derek frowned. "Hunters?" What would hunters want with Stiles?

Laura shook her head. "I know. It doesn't make sense," she agreed. "You said Stiles isn't a werewolf, right?" She looked between both of her siblings for the answer.

"No," Derek said with a nod.

Stiles didn't smell like a werewolf. He smelled like curly fries, ADHD medication, freshly fallen leaves, a little desert sand breeze, Old Spice Foxcrest body wash ("For cunning gentlemen, Derek. That's what it says on the bottle. It was _made_ for me."), but not like a werewolf.

Cora shook her head. "If he's a werewolf, I'm a selkie," she said. "But maybe he just pissed them off. It seems to be a specialty of his."

"He's not that bad," Derek cut in. "A lot of people in town treat him like family."

"If the hunters are new, he could have made the wrong comment at the wrong time," Laura reasoned. "Especially if he's as opinionated as Cora keeps telling me. Hunters also don't tend to like people who give them an attitude." She faced Derek. "Has he mentioned any more incidents like his Jeep?"

Derek frowned. "He didn't even admit to the Jeep. He said he crashed it. The hunters might have scared him and he didn't want to draw attention to it so they would leave him alone."

"Well then he isn't a total lost cause then," Cora pitched in.

Laura crossed her arms and closed her eyes. Both other Hale siblings fell silent while she thought it out. After only a few moments, Laura took a deep breath and relaxed her stance.

"If these are hunters, we don't want to get on their radar. If they attack someone else, I'll reevaluate the situation. If they come after one of us, we'll either fight if we can win or run if we can't. We're a small pack, so we aren't very strong. We'll have to make decisions carefully. So, for now, my decision is that we do nothing."

Derek tensed and she paused long enough to give him an understanding look.

"I know you want to get back at the people who attacked Stiles. I do. But if we get into a fight we can't win, that could lead to more trouble for the entire town, including Stiles," she said. "So keep an eye on him. If anything strange happens, let me know. Cora, you too. Both of you keep your eyes peeled for any suspicious activity. We need to be on top of this in case the shit hits the fan."

Cora snorted. "Such a way with words." She waved off the pointed looks thrown her way by both of her siblings. "I got it. I know. Hunters, bad. Vigilance, good."

Laura sighed and shook her head. She was cursed with two headstrong, disobedient betas. Sometimes Derek felt bad about that. But then again, sometimes he didn't.

He had been waiting, hoping Laura would have a plan for how to take on those who had nearly totaled Stiles' Jeep and instead he was given orders to wait and watch. As much as that wasn't what he wanted, he would do it. Laura was a much better planner than either Derek or Cora, who would rather run in fangs first. She had a plan, and if she didn't she was making one. Derek just had to trust her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Sorry if you expected a chapter last night and saw there wasn't one. I figured everyone would be busy with the 14th so I gave it an extra day.

"Scott doesn't believe me."

They were at the small Beacon Hills Park, at the midpoint of the bridge over the pond. Derek leaned on the railing, watching three ducks swim in circles near the bridge while Stiles tossed the leftover bread from his sandwich at them.

"About what?"

Pelting one of the ducks in the head, Stiles complained, "I told him my latest back story for you and he laughed at me." He glanced at Derek briefly but looked away when he caught Derek looking back at him. "I told him you were an undercover cop whose last partner died in a shootout with a drug cartel and that's why your family moved back to Beacon Hills - it's a quiet town no one's heard of. They'd never find you."

Well the quiet town where no one would find them part was close.

Derek shook his head. "I'm not a cop."

Stiles heaved a great sigh and dumped all his breadcrumbs into the water at the same time. The ducks and fish went crazy trying to get more of it than their fellows.

"See, I figured you would say that. But at least you didn't laugh at me." He scowled. "I think he thinks I'm making it up because I'm not actually dating you. He said he couldn't believe _you_ would date me. And then, of course, Jackson freaking Whittemore happened to walk by and said there was no way that 'Sexless Stilinski' could land someone as hot as you."

Derek growled low in his throat but forced his eyes not to glow and his teeth and hands to stay human. Stiles flashed him a grin.

"Yeah, Jackson's an ass. He always has been and, I fear, always will be." He shrugged and flipped to lean his hip against the wood railing, facing Derek. "But still, it'd be nice if my best friend at least believed me, you know? Dating you would not even _begin_ to rank among to most outrageous lies I've told him."

"I'm not surprised," Derek quipped, then pointed to Stiles' front pants pocket. "Give me your phone."

Stiles was already fumbling to pull the device out as he asked, "Why? You need to call someone?"

"No," Derek said, accepting the phone.

He tapped on the camera icon and grabbed Stiles, pulling him in close. He held his arm out so the camera could see both of them, typical selfie style. Just before he could tap the screen to take the picture, Stiles tilted his head to the side so their heads were touching. Derek felt tension leave his shoulders, tension he hadn't realized he was holding, and his lips quirked up. He blinked and took the picture.

Moving away a step, Derek checked the picture. It wasn't quite centered, but he liked it. The smile on Stiles' face wasn't as big as his beaming grin but it was sweeter. And Derek looked better than content, which was a big deal since Cora was always teasing that he looked murderous in pictures. His eyes were closed but it didn't take away from the shot, and if they'd been open the glare would have ruined it. Derek took a moment to send it to himself and then handed the phone back to Stiles.

"Now you have proof you can show your friends," Derek commented while Stiles stared at the photo.

Stiles stared at his phone for several long moments with slowly widening eyes. Then he blinked rapidly and slipped it into his front pocket again. "Thank you. I mean, you're...you're amazing, you know? Really, really amazing, and great."

"I think you have me confused with the sheriff's son," Derek responded. "I look like a convicted felon and he still asked me to lunch."

The blush on Stiles' cheeks was endearing. He stepped closer to Derek, erasing the space between them, and lifted himself up just a little onto his toes. Kissing in the park sounded incredibly cliché, but Derek quite honestly didn't care.

 

...

...

Derek was sitting on a large boulder, absent mindedly carving away at a small fallen branch he'd picked up off the ground just for something to do with his hands. The red wolf was playing with a ring-tailed cat that had had the misfortune to skitter out in its sight. The wolf would let the ring-tail go and it would scurry away, but then the wolf would catch it again and drag or carry it back near to Derek and do it again. Derek knew it had no intention of eat the ring-tail but it also didn't intend to injure the mammal so he didn't feel like stopping the game.

The last time the red wolf had played a game like this had been with a skunk. That hadn't turned out so well. Derek had stayed home from work the next day due to the smell, even though that meant listening to Cora and Laura laugh at him for pissing off a skunk. That was, slightly, better than having to explain to his coworkers and Stiles why he'd been out in the forest messing with a skunk in the first place, and having them wince whenever he walked near them.

Speaking of Stiles, Derek tossed the carved up wood away and pulled his phone from his jeans. The latest text was from Stiles. In fact, almost every single text on the phone was from Stiles. Cora and Laura usually just called and work only called if they wanted him to fill in for someone.

**Text from Stiles**

_Think I'll make a movie about you._

_.  
_

**Text from Derek**

_About me?_

_._

**Text from Stiles**

_Call it Mr. Fanservice about a superhero who kicks ass while completely shirtless the entire movie._

_._

**Text from Stiles**

_Enemies will be fully clothed women and nearly naked men._

_._

**Text from Derek**

_That would be different_

_._

**Text from Stiles**

_You might have to fight a dragon with your bare hands. Get all dirty and sweaty. For plot._

Derek was pulled from grinning at his phone by the sound of leaves crunching under feet. The red wolf's head snapped up and it stood alert. A moment later it bounded over to stand next to the boulder where Derek sat, not even caring when the ring-tail got away. Derek stood up just as Cora came into view.

"So is this what you've been getting up to all the time?" she asked, sounding almost bored. "I have to admit, playing with a wild dog was nothing Laura or I thought you were doing during the full moon."

The red wolf's ears flattened and it barred its teeth, but it also took a step back and to the side to hide partially behind Derek.

"Did you want something, Cora?" Derek asked, not rising to her bait.

His little sister shrugged. "Not really. Though I am curious about a red wolf in California, and why you choose to hang out with it instead of your sisters."

Derek narrowed his eyes. "Leave it. It's none of your business."

"It is so my business," she snapped. "You're my pack, Derek. _Pack_. You do remember what that means, right? That wolf? It's not pack." She sniffed the air briefly. "It doesn't even smell like a normal wolf."

The red wolf gave an angry bark and growl but didn't move from behind Derek. Derek didn't even glance back at it but Cora locked a glare on it.

"Maybe do some research, Cora," Derek said evenly. "Red wolves are their own species, a hybrid between coyotes and grey wolves. Of course it doesn't smell like a normal wolf."

The growling ended abruptly and Derek did glance back that time to see the red wolf staring up at him with its tongue hanging out, most of the tension gone from its stance as quickly as it had arrived. Cora obviously noticed the change in the wolf's behavior too. She huffed.

"Fine. Do what you want," she sneered. "But if you're going to create a new pack with your solitary coyote? At least formally leave the Hale pack first."

With that she stalked off again, and Derek didn't attempt to call her back. When the sound of her angry stomps through the brush were gone, the red wolf nosed at Derek's right hand and let out a pitiful whine. Derek knelt down so he was more on the wolf's level and scratched around its ears, which made it happier.

"I'm not leaving my pack or you," Derek assured the animal. "But Cora's right. I need to tell Laura about you, hopefully before Cora gives her the wrong impression."

The red wolf yipped and licked Derek's face, then looked overly pleased when Derek groaned and wiped off the spit left behind.

 

...

...

Talking to Laura about the red wolf was more difficult than Derek had imagined. He pulled her outside after dinner that night and admitted he had been spending time in the woods with a lone red wolf, and that that's where he'd been going on the full moon as well. Admitting was the easy part.

Laura told him she'd smelled the wolf while out on her own runs, so she wasn't surprised. She did ask him why he had chosen the red wolf though.

"It's not pack," she said, without the sneer that Cora had put into it.

After a long while, Derek managed, "It is my friend."

Laura wanted to find out how a red wolf had found its way to Beacon Hills, California, since the only _wild_ red wolves left were on the completely other side of the continent in North Carolina. They wondered if maybe it belonged to a breeding habitat but had gotten loose, which Derek couldn't immediately deny. The first time he met the wolf, it asked him to play. He was a werewolf but it never considered him a threat. Laura said she would check if there were any red wolves reported missing anywhere.

At first, it seemed Laura didn't want Derek to hang out with the red wolf anymore. Derek felt his heart stutter briefly, and he felt queasy. When he then assured her that the wolf was no threat to the pack or the town, Laura's expression grew thoughtful.

"If it really is wild, and it doesn't belong anywhere," she started, slowly, "would you want to have a normal wolf in the pack?"

A wolf in a werewolf pack was practically unheard of. Werewolves were unpredictable on the full moon. Plus there were hunters to worry about, and normal wolves did not have the healing factor or enhanced abilities that werewolves had in order to get away. Did he want the red wolf in their pack? When it was possible there were hunters around? He didn't want to stop seeing the wolf, to have to avoid it, but he wasn't sure he could knowingly put the wolf in danger by bringing it into the pack.

He didn't have an answer for his alpha.

 

...

...

Derek wasn't as excitable during the next full moon. He avoided his sisters when they went for their run, as usual, but he also didn't go find the red wolf. Instead, he chased a deer and several small animals, not killing them but letting himself scare them and growl at them like he was going to. At about one AM, a lonely sound broke through the quiet of the night.

A howl. It was a medium tone and consistent, and Derek knew immediately that it belonged to the red wolf.

Abandoning his current prey, Derek bounded in the direction of the howl. He didn't know why the wolf was howling, unless it was looking for him but the howl didn't sound like that. Derek also didn't know if Laura or Cora would go looking for the source of the noise or what they would do if they found it.

The red wolf was sitting on an outcropping of rock. From here, you could see all of Beacon Hills where it spread out past the edge of the forest, plus a nice expanse of forest between you and the city. Just through the tops of the trees to the right, the power plant was visible. When Derek came up behind the red wolf on the rocks, it cut off its howl abruptly and flipped to face him, on alert. Derek made his eyes glow and let out a low rumble of noise, upset that the wolf seemed scared of him.

The wolf whined and shrank down to lie on the rocks, tail curling up against its body and paws over its ears. Derek took a step back, unsure what to do. He sniffed the air but there was no blood. The wolf wasn't hurt. Cora and Laura were in the area, but there were no other wolves, yet the red wolf had been howling, asking for an answering call.

Oh.

Derek stepped over to the red wolf and laid down beside it, his muzzle over the red wolf's neck. His breath hit the red wolf's ear with every exhale. Only a minute or so later, Laura and Cora came into view. They weren't in full wolf form, but their eyes were glowing bright in the darkness. Derek lifted his head and motioned them over with a huff of breath. Laura transformed and padded over easily but Cora waited until both of her pack mates were snuggling around the whining red wolf before she joined in. With three werewolves piling up around it, the red wolf looked even smaller than usual. But with the heat of three werewolves surrounding it, the red wolf began to calm down and Derek knew he'd guessed right.

The howls had been for a pack. The red wolf had once had a pack, or at least one other wolf, that it called family, and that family was gone. The Hale pack might not be a good fit for the red wolf, but they could give it comfort for one night.

 

...

...

After the first month, dates between Derek and Stiles changed a bit. They still got lunch or dinner and Stiles still brought Derek curly fries at work once a week, but that wasn't it. They went on walks, where Stiles babbled a lot and Derek actually contributed to conversation. They caught a movie or two at the dollar theater near the edge of town. One time, Stiles pulled Derek into a gay bar and introduced him to "the royal women that changed my life" - apparently by dressing him up and having no brain or libido to mouth filter.

Stiles dragged Derek to a Harvest Festival near the end of the month. Derek paid to get pictures taken in the photo booth that had been set up, and frowned when every one of them came out with Stiles looking blurry - even with the flash and Stiles sitting almost unnaturally still, for Stiles. He'd worn contacts today specifically so they could have pictures of the festival. Stiles gave him a peck on the cheek and held up his pocket camera. It wasn't the carnival type picture Derek had hoped for, but any pictures were better than no pictures.

They got a spray paint art, played mini carnival games - bean bag toss, horseshoes, a football toss game that Derek beat five times in a row, a bowling game Stiles managed to get a strike in. Stiles got his face painted like a fox and, after much nagging, Derek let the lady paint a batman eye mask on him.

"Aw, I should've gotten a black cat," Stiles whined when Derek chose. "Then I could've made Batman and Catwoman jokes for the rest of forever."

They took turns in food eating contests - Stiles in the pie eating contest and Derek in the hotdog eating contest. Stiles came in second, Derek came in first. He wouldn't have entered except Stiles had turned beseeching eyes on him, and then he was cheering so enthusiastically that Derek couldn't help but actually try to win. His big prize was a t-shirt, coupons for free stuff at the shop that had hosted the contest, and a little medal to wear around his neck.

The last thing they did was participate in the tug-of-war game. People were randomly assigned sides of the rope. The game had been running all day so the ground was already slick with mud from the pit in the center and the crushed leaves from previous players' shoes. Derek and Stiles were on the same side of the last game of the day. Derek didn't try very hard, knowing his strength was too great even against the entire other team of normal people.

Their team stumbled forward two steps and Stiles whined, something deep in his throat. He heaved on the rope as hard as he could with the rest of the team, then glanced over his shoulder at Derek right behind him.

"Can you pull any harder?" he huffed out, his sweat starting to wash off the fox makeup.

Derek took one look into Stiles' dark brown, cocoa warm eyes, and pulled hard at the rope. The other team was jerked forward and into the mud, but their own team didn't fare much better. Suddenly without any tension to pull against, everyone crashed to the ground. Stiles, half turned toward Derek when they won, spun into his boyfriend's chest with an 'oof!' and knocked them both over as well.

Their half of the warzone wasn't much cleaner than if they'd fallen into the stagnant mud in the middle, and Derek felt mud seep into his jeans with a small grimace. But then Stiles started laughing, tried to push himself up, slipped, and fell into the mud face first, only to laugh harder once he flipped over onto his back. He looked ridiculous, half his red-orange and white face paint gone and covered in mud. Derek huffed out a few chuckles of his own before leaning over and pressing a kiss to Stiles' unpainted lips.

Stiles blinked up at him when he pulled away. "Think we could buy a mask later? Cause I'm kind of into the whole 'kissing Batman' thing. Or, hey, Mr. Fanservice? You know, if you-"

Derek rolled his eyes and broke off Stiles' impending rant with another kiss.

 

...

...

At two months of dating, Derek swallowed his fears and invited Stiles back to his place for a family dinner meet-and-greet. Stiles knew Cora from class and recognized Laura, but this would be the first time Derek introduced him as his boyfriend.

Laura was cooking because Cora could burn water and Derek only knew how to make spaghetti. Derek had told her about Stiles making his dad eat healthy, so she started looking at healthy meals to serve. And after Stiles talked at length about his love of Mexican food, and Derek had passed that on, she'd decided on slow cooker pork tacos. Derek didn't understand slow cookers so left everything to his alpha and worried about other things, mainly Cora. She had openly shown her distaste for Stiles since his existence was made known to the pack.

Cora, however, seemed just as nervous as Derek, and startled when Derek touched her shoulder. She snapped at him when he asked what was wrong, though, so he let her be.

As Laura was setting the table, Derek noticed she had pulled out five plates.

"Five?" he asked.

Before Laura could answer, there was a knock at the door. Stiles' heart was jumping in his chest rather erratically and Derek kissed him hello, hoping to calm both of them down. It sort of worked. Stiles threw a casual greeting at Cora and thanked Laura for having him over, and then there was another knock on the door.

"I'll get it," Cora said, jumping up and racing past Derek, who was still by the door, to open it herself. She beamed at the girl on the other side. "Hey, Malia."

The dark haired girl at the door had a steady heartbeat and a pretty smile. In fact, she was pretty all over. Cora leaned forward and gave her a welcome peck on the lips before motioning her in, leaving Derek and Stiles to gape at each other in the doorway.

"Well you learn something new every day," Stiles quipped, placing his hands on his hips. He glanced at Derek. "Guessing you didn't know either?"

"No. I didn't even know she was interested in anyone," Derek revealed quietly, though he knew Laura and Cora could hear him if they wanted to. This was probably why Cora hadn't been holding Stiles over Derek's head since she learned they were dating.

Stiles whistled, smirked, and hurried over to introduce himself to the new addition.

The best part about having Malia join them for dinner was that Cora was so full of her own nervous energy that she didn't sneer or snap at anyone the entire meal. Malia was studying to be an attorney. Stiles made a crack about having a diverse group of people all sitting at the same table and followed it quickly with a comment on how he was surrounded by super attractive people.

"You are too." The words flew from Derek's mouth before he had even properly thought them.

It made Stiles blush and Cora gag and Malia smile. Laura nodded and agreed with him, even complimenting Stiles' freckles, which made Stiles blush deeper. Cora loudly complimented the tacos and conversation moved on.

Malia and Cora headed out for a walk after dinner, so Derek and Stiles helped clean up the dishes. Stiles was drying the dishes after Derek washed them because he was less likely to break something that way. They talked while they worked, about food they liked and what they thought of Cora and Malia and Derek asked if Stiles would want to come over more often. Of course he did.

"I'd ask you over to my place, but my dad is the sheriff and he carries a gun. I'd hate for you to get shot," Stiles said, in a tone of voice that was midway between totally serious and obviously joking. "But I'm totally talking you up to him, so maybe. Maybe soon."

When the last dish was dry, Derek reached in the sink to uncork the drain. He jumped when Stiles snapped him in the butt with the towel, an impish grin on his face. And of course that meant that Derek splashed water on Stiles, who then tried to snap the towel again but Derek caught it and wrangled it from Stiles' grip. The final tug to pull the towel loose brought Stiles within Derek's breathing space, and he wrapped his free arm around Stiles to pull him even closer. Stiles grinned and pressed a butterfly soft kiss to Derek's lips.

"Happy two months," he sang under his breath.

Derek kissed him, more intently and deeper than Stiles had. "Two months."

Stiles eyes were lit with mirth. "Have you decided what we're gonna do at three months?" he whispered conspiratorially.

At three months, Derek was thinking about telling Stiles he was a werewolf. He'd have to get permission from Laura first, but he thought she'd be okay with it. It was obvious that Derek cared about Stiles, and that Stiles cared about Derek in return. Stiles was trustworthy, even if he was a blabbermouth, and full of a strange conniving innocence that shouldn't be possible but was. More than anyone ever in the past, Derek was certain he could trust Stiles with their secret. He just had to work up the courage to ask Laura.

 

...

...

Derek's forest romps with the red wolf came to an abrupt and startling end.

They were playing a wolfish form of tag, as they had done before and it was Derek's turn to be chased while the red wolf tried to catch up. They both knew it was just shy of impossible for the red wolf to catch him if Derek actually tried to get away. His werewolf speed was simply too much and a normal wolf stood no chance. Still, the red wolf always gave its all to the chase, running almost to exhaustion before ever giving up.

Tonight, they never reached that point. The red wolf pounced toward Derek, who turned abruptly to avoid, and found itself sinking into a pile of leaves. Without missing a beat it dashed the leaves and continued the chase. Just as it managed to bite at his tail, Derek tore off to the left, letting out a happy bark of noise to tease his wolf friend into another try.

A scent hit Derek's nose that ended his joyous play in an instant. It was the smell of rubber, and gas, and curly fries. It was Stiles.

Suddenly Derek's carefree wolf play was replaced with worry. Stiles was in the woods? On a full moon? This late? What if he was been bitten by a werewolf? What if he wandered into their path and the red wolf attacked? Why was he out here in the first place?

As Derek hurried toward the scent, he heard a worried bark from behind him. He wasn't worried though. This was Stiles, not a hunter. This was Stiles.

This was Stiles' _Jeep_.

Derek sniffed around the Jeep, propped himself up to look inside, but found no sign of Stiles near the blue vehicle. It was parked on the edge of a back road, hardly paved and rarely used. The keys were hiding under the passenger's seat. There were two textbooks in the back seat along with a backpack that was on its way out, a pair of old sneakers and faded sweatpants, and a shopping bag full of bags of chips and donuts. But there was no Stiles.

The red wolf approached the truck on its belly, shuffling forward with its head down and its ears flattened to the sides, eyes on Derek. Derek barely paid it any attention beyond recognizing it was there. Instead he began sniffing around on the ground in widening circles leaving the Jeep, looking into the trees all around them. It should've been impossible, but Derek couldn't get a scent. Stiles' scent was all over the Jeep, but there was next to nothing of him anywhere else. The only prominent smells were himself and the wolf, not even a bird or squirrel had passed here recently.

The red wolf made a pitiful whine of a noise, not liking that Derek was sniffing around the Jeep.

There was a vague hint of Stiles' scent leading briefly straight away from the driver's door, but other than that Derek would be running blind. Did he care? If Stiles was out in the woods tonight, he was in danger. Derek hardly thought Cora or Laura would attack Stiles, but Cora might try and scare him and then he could fall into a ditch or hit his head or break a limb or any number of things. And werewolves weren't the only thing dangerous in these woods, especially at night.

Casting a glance at the red wolf with a short growl, Derek pat the ground with his front paws and shook his head. Stay here. Then he started running. It wasn't long before Derek heard the telltale footfalls of the red wolf following, but he wasn't exactly surprised. Derek wasn't its alpha and it was scared, of course it wouldn't listen.

Derek stopped to investigate every nook and cranny in the earth and stone he passed, sniffing around for any hint that Stiles had been there. Like at the Jeep, there was nothing. The smell of fallen leaves, wet dirt, squirrels, birds, rabbits, insects, dead wood, fresh water. The sound of owls, crickets, the wind in the branches, his loping run through the brush and those of the red wolf desperately trying to keep up. He saw a fox bound quickly out of sight at his approach, a group of fireflies around a bush to his right, the river that wound its way through the preserve.

Derek stopped at the river and scented the air. Just as before, the only familiar scents were his own and that of the red wolf. The red wolf. The red wolf who had warned him away from the Jeep, crawled in guiltily while Derek inspected it, chased after him in a running panic. The red wolf's scent had been all over the area around the Jeep even before it arrived.

Anger welled up inside of Derek, making his vision tunnel. The red wolf slowed to a graceful yet hesitant stop behind Derek, its footsteps near silent in the grass. It made a low whine and Derek snapped. With a roar he flipped around, too quick for any normal animal to react. The red wolf was pinned on its back beneath him in a second, its chest rising and falling rapidly, recognizing that this was not a game, that its life was in danger.

Derek growled at it, baring his teeth, body tense. This was not like the first time they met, when Derek had been angry it was on Hale property. This time Derek was furious, that this wolf he had spent months being open and free around had done something to Stiles.

The red wolf made a sound, one of the many that caught Derek off guard. A whimper. He only let himself think about it for a moment before he was growling again, placing his large paw on the smaller canine's chest and snarling.

It locked eyes with Derek, those trusting but fearful brown eyes. Then with another whimper, the red wolf beneath him changed. Its muzzle shortened, its body grew bigger and longer. Hair the color of the brown fur on its back grew on its head. And within seconds, Derek's hulking wolf form was pinning not a red wolf, but a very familiar human to the ground.

Derek jumped away, heart beating erratically, breath heaving, and stared with wide eyes as Stiles Stilinski pushed himself up into a sitting position. He was wearing his usual plaid shirt, but with no t-shirt beneath it, and a pair of loose jeans, no shoes. There were leaves in his hair and sticking to his back. He was looking at Derek with sad, pleading eyes the same color as the red wolf's.

"Derek," he croaked. Derek jolted and bared his teeth. "Derek, I can explain. Please, just let me-"

Without waiting for Stiles to finish, Derek bolted into the woods again. Stiles was a werewolf? But that was impossible. He didn't smell like one, as a human or as a wolf. His eyes didn't glow. He could become a wolf without the full moon. He wasn't super fast or strong. He was a walking disaster as a human. How was it possible Stiles was the red wolf?

"Derek!" he heard shouted after him, over and over, but he didn't respond.

For months he had spent his free time in the woods with the red wolf. For months he had shown it his trust. For months he had begun opening himself up to Stiles, talking to him, hanging out with him, kissing him, letting him get close to his pack, liking him more than most any other human he'd ever met. And it had all been a lie? Part of some twisted game Stiles was playing?

The red wolf cried. Derek howled and kept running.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love all of you. All the creeping readers who don't comment but have followed and favorited this story, all the people who took the time to leave a comment, every one of you. Thank you for making this story a treat to share. I sincerely hope you enjoy this ending to 'Red Wolf, Werewolf.'
> 
> If you didn't know, this story now has a graphic to go with it. Check the top of chapter 1.

For the first two days after the full moon, his phone was constantly barraged with calls and texts from Stiles. Derek ignored every single one. The ones he did look at were continuous apologies. On the third day the texts became 'Please pick up your phone' and 'I swear I can explain.' And every evening for a week, the red wolf howled all night.

"Derek, you need to talk to him," Laura told him after a week, sounding as if she were disappointed in him. "He's been coming by the library every day just to ask me about you."

"And me, both before and after class," Cora chipped in.

"Why?" Derek spat back. "He's known we're the same for months but hid it from us. He's a liar."

Laura lifted an eyebrow at him. "He spent the entire semester asking his professor how to do illegal things without being illegal and he's a writer who has been coming up with fake backgrounds for you for months. Does it really surprise you that he's good at keeping a few secrets?"

No. It didn't. That was part of the problem. Derek had known Stiles was good at lying from the moment he met the guy, when he spun a story about wrecking his Jeep instead of being attacked by hunters.

"Well I guess this explains why hunters would attack his Jeep," Derek changed the subject a bit.

Cora glared. "That's why you need to talk to him," she said sharply. "The more howling that idiot does, the more suspicious the hunters are going to get. There aren't any wild wolves anywhere near Beacon Hills but the forest is full of howling. You've got to make him stop."

Derek glared. "Why me?" he growled. "Why not Laura? _She's_ the alpha. She can order him to stop and he'll listen. Why do I have to do it?"

Laura ran a hand through her hair. "I can order him to stop, but my alpha abilities will do nothing to compel him to listen." When she got curious looks from both her siblings, she continued. "He's not a werewolf."

A derisive snort. "Laura, I watched him transform."

She shot him a short glare. "He's not human, it's true. But he's not a werewolf. We would've known if he were, smelled it on him. His scent changes along with his body. He can become a wolf at any time of the month. Plus he's small and as weak as any normal wolf. He's different. I don't know what he is, but he won't listen to me just because I tell him to."

When she continued to stare at him, Derek crossed his arms.

"And that means _I_ have to go talk to him?" he asked, knowing he sounded petulant and not caring. "He's been lying to me, Laura. I don't owe him anything. I don't have to let him explain."

She kept looking at him. "No. No you don't. And if you want to ignore him for the rest of your life, you can do that. _After_ you talk to him." Derek opened his mouth but she held up her hand to silence him before he could make a sound. "For the sake of your _pack_ , Derek. He's going to bring danger upon us if he keeps this up, not to mention what he's doing to himself."

The familiar worry for Stiles made an appearance then. From the moment he'd met the guy, Derek had cared what happened to Stiles. He didn't want anyone to hurt him or cause him trouble. He was equally as protective of the red wolf. He was angry at Stiles, but that need to protect hadn't diminished at all. He didn't want Stiles to be killed by hunters, or worse, tortured. If he could get Stiles to stop causing a ruckus every night, Derek could make a clean break. He wouldn't worry that Stiles was captured by hunters and he could also avoid Stiles blowing up his phone trying to get in contact with him.

With an aggravated sigh, Derek said, "Fine. Fine. I'll talk to him tomorrow. Happy?"

Laura frowned. "No. But it'll do."

...

...

Derek sent Stiles a text the next morning, just a simple 'The library at 5:30.' Surprisingly, Stiles didn't jump to respond. In fact, he didn't reply all day. When Derek got there after work, 5:30 on the dot, Laura nodded to him in greeting. Derek sniffed discreetly, but Stiles wasn't anywhere in the library yet. When Laura was done helping out some library visitors at the front desk, she waved Derek over.

"Have you talked to Stiles?" Laura asked in a quiet voice.

Derek shook his head. "I asked him to meet me here at five thirty."

Now Laura's eyes drifted to the computer clock next to her and her lips pulled down. "It's five thirty-four."

"What's your point?"

She graced Derek with a look that spoke volumes about her thoughts on his intelligence. "Derek, he's been texting you pretty much nonstop since he outed himself to you. He's been at the library almost daily asking about you. He even bugs Cora, knowing she dislikes him. If you told him to be here at five thirty, he would've been here at five."

Derek shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "He has class until five."

"He would've left early if not skipped it altogether," Laura persisted. "Try calling him. If he doesn't answer your call, then we know something's wrong."

He didn't want to call Stiles. He was still ticked at Stiles for lying to him for over two months. Derek hadn't told Stiles about being a werewolf, but that was because he thought Stiles was human. Stiles obviously knew that Derek wasn't human and yet he still kept his mouth shut. Amazing, considering he was practically incapable of keeping his mouth shut otherwise. Stiles had been the two people closest to Derek outside of his own family but he hadn't thought Derek deserved to know that. He hadn't thought to talk to Derek about the fact that there were hunters in town, or explain why they had bashed in his Jeep or-

There were hunters in town and they had bashed in Stiles' Jeep.

"Shit." Derek whipped his phone out and dialed Stiles, then put the phone to his ear and listened to it ring.

Every consecutive ring put Derek more and more on edge. Because Laura was right, Stiles had been making an annoying racket for the last week trying to get in contact with Derek and he should have been here, he should have picked up immediately.

 _"Hello, esteemed caller! It seems you just missed me,"_ Stiles voice half-sang. _"You know the deal. Name, number, reason for calling. Sorry to say, without that I won't even bother calling you back. JUST KIDDING SCOTT. Everyone else, I am so serious."_

Derek hung up before it could record a message and growled. Laura's eyes were narrowed.

"I'll call for someone to take my shift," she said before disappearing into the back room.

Stiles had been on these peoples' radar for months. He had probably been on the lookout for them for longer than Derek had known him. That was why the wolf had been near the power plant that day, and why it had led Derek away. Stiles had known those men were hunters. He'd known there were hunters already aware of a supernatural presence in Beacon Hills and yet that _idiot_ had sat around howling for-

Derek shut his eyes. He forced himself to put his phone in his pocket before he could break it from squeezing it too tight. If Stiles was hurt or worse, it would be Derek's fault. If he had only answered the phone one of the hundreds of times Stiles tried to reach out. If he hadn't run away the night of the full moon. And if Stiles was dead, Derek didn't know what he would do - to those responsible or to himself.

A hand on his arm jerked Derek out of his thoughts and he locked eyes with Laura, the frown deep on her face. "Let's go find him."

Derek didn't need that to be an order to follow it.

...

...

Cora found Stiles' Jeep parked on the side of a back road that came close to Hale property. At first she had been confused because Stiles' scent was only in the Jeep, then remembered that his scent changed when he became a wolf, and the red wolf's scent was all over. So was the smell of unfamiliar humans.

They traced the scents back toward the power plant but stopped at the fork in the road, as usual. Laura laid out a plan. They weren't sure if the hunters were based inside the plant or just very close to it, so initially they would split up and approach from different directions, just three separate people out for hikes in the woods. If they found something, they would text each other so that they could take on the hunters as one stronger force. If it looked too dangerous, get out and wait for help.

Which is how Derek found himself coming up on the power plant near its back side. At first it was simply another area of the woods and Derek marched unhappily but quietly through the underbrush. Then he saw an oddly snapped branch on a plant and stopped to fully take in his surroundings.

He could see where footprints had been mostly removed from the dirt of the forest floor. He could smell the faint hint of gunpowder and metal and wolfsbane, old in the air but recurring frequently. Hunters often underestimated a werewolf's senses, usually comparing it to their own - even if only subconsciously. Following the scent was easiest, but Derek also kept an eye on the ground for the footprints and the trees for hidden cameras or weapons.

Just as he came up to the property line for the power plant, the footprints stopped entirely. It was too sudden a loss to simply be that they had fully covered their tracks, so Derek started lightly kicking leaves and dirt around on the ground. As expected, he found a hidden door. He shot off a quick text to Laura and Cora and then knelt down to inspect the door.

It was small, easier to hide under leaves and dirt but also meant that only one maybe two hunters would be able to get through it at a time. If there was to be a fight, that would work in the pack's favor. He felt around for the edges of the door and found two small indents, one on either side of the door. Those must be the handles, in place of anything metal or otherwise obvious as a handle.

Experimentally, Derek slipped his fingers into the small slots and lifted the door. To the hunters' credit, it opened silently. The scent that reached Derek's nose made every muscle in his body tense. Ash. Wolfsbane. Panic. Sweat. Metal. Gunpowder. Blood. Singed fur. The red wolf. Stiles.

Without a second thought to his sisters or the danger, Derek slid through the door and let it fall soundlessly shut. There was enough light for Derek's eyes to see by, even without making them glow. He crept down the stairs to the floor and looked around. The first room had a door on either side of it and a few crates that smelled like ash and monkshood. Of course they wouldn't leave anything too incriminating in the first room, just in case someone found this place.

The door to the left was open and light was seeping into the room. Derek crept over to it and glanced into the area beyond. It was a hallway. There were no cameras that Derek could see, no hunters. He didn't smell anyone hiding nearby. He could hear something though. The creak of a metal chair, faint but desperate panting, a kick of a metal toed boot to wood, metal being sharpened.

His footsteps were almost as silent as the door to get in here as he hurried down the hall. There were lights in the ceiling above him, illuminating the area so that there was no way of hiding in the shadows if someone came out of one of the rooms branching off from the hallway. Following his ears and his nose, Derek stopped at the third, and last, door on the right.

"Alright," he heard through the wood. It was a whiney voiced man speaking. "We're making good time."

"I'm amazed it's lasted this long," a woman responded, and the metal chair creaked.

The man made a noise of agreement. "Not a very good healer, this one. But it's still a beast so we test it for limitations and then kill it."

The woman let out a sigh and it sounded like she stood up from the chair. "Alright then, it's my turn. And this time I think we'll up the dosage, see how much more it can ingest before it passes out."

"No."

It was a faint, plaintive plea that barely sounded through the door, but Derek recognized the voice immediately. Derek shoved his way through the door, barely taking the time to turn the handle instead of just plowing through. He was already shifted into his beta form by the time his eyes landed on the two hunters in the room. One was a twig of a man standing at a table with pouches, jars, and weapons on it. The other was older, a woman holding a gleaming knife in one hand and a bottle of powder in the other, standing in front of Stiles.

Stiles was sitting sprawled out along the far wall, hands and feet bound by rope and chain. His hands were hoisted up and pinned to the wall over his head while his feet were individually shackled and with enough chain leeway that he could choose to either hold his feet together or spread them a foot apart. His jeans were stained with grass and dirt and the dark rust of blood, with tears all over. His t-shirt was no better off. There was a faint sprinkling of red and brown fur around where Stiles was sitting, and the skin around his wrists and bare ankles was a mix of shades of red and black. He had a black eye, bruised chin, and a split lip. Derek would have sworn he suddenly became an alpha by how the world turned red.

The woman's knife landed in Derek's shoulder as he lunged forward but he barely noticed. She was on the ground in two seconds flat and struggling to keep his hands and teeth off her, and failing. There was a slash across her midriff and a cut on her face before Derek registered the stomping of several pairs of feet and then suddenly there was an arrow alongside the knife. Derek stumbled away from the woman with a yowl but made sure to put himself between Stiles and the hunters. There were six of them now, four more crowding in from the hallway.

"Come to save it?" an older man with graying hair and holding a crossbow asked. "I'm not sure you should. It's a defective model."

Derek growled and bared his fangs. Stiles wasn't defective! He was just different! These hunters were treating Stiles like a werewolf when he wasn't one. That was the problem. Not Stiles.

"Maybe defective by your standards, but not by ours," a surprisingly calm Laura stated.

The hunters shifted to look back at the door, where Laura was holding one of their men up by the neck without looking at him, his eyes already rolling back in his head. They were both shifted and looked angry. Laura was letting her eyes glow red - an intimidation tactic. She nodded at Derek and he didn't have to ask what she meant. There were only four hunters capable of fighting and she and Cora could take them.

Derek reached up and pulled the knife from his shoulder with a soft groan. The movement drew just enough attention away from his sisters that Cora landed the first blow and started the fighting. Meanwhile, Derek moved to Stiles' side and grabbed his tied wrists. The instant zing made him snap his hand back, glaring at the ropes. Wolfsbane, he should have guessed. Using the knife, Derek carefully but quickly sliced the ropes off his wrists and ankles.

Another arrow made its home in Derek's back but he'd barely turned to snarl at whomever had let it fly before he saw Laura take the man down. So Derek ripped the arrow out and focused on Stiles again, grabbing the chains that held him to the wall and pulling hard. By the time the metal began to crack open, the room was quiet behind him.

"Hey, smarty," Cora said, kneeling on Stiles' other side. She held up her right hand and showed him the metal inside it. "How about we just use the key?"

Derek glared at her the entire time she was unlocking the manacles. Laura called Cora over to help her tie the hunters up, since his alpha was amazing at fighting without killing anyone, and Derek was left with Stiles again.

He placed his hands on either side of Stiles' face and lifted it from where it was listing against his chest. It took him repeating Stiles' name three times before the younger man's eyes focused on him. The relief that spread through Derek when Stiles grinned at him completely overran any anger he'd been holding on to.

"Fanservice," Stiles murmured, voice weak but happy. Little grin still in place and eyes never leaving Derek's, he said, "I need a hospital."

...

...

Getting Stiles to the hospital was weird for Derek, who had never spent much time with doctors before. Surrounded by werewolves or humans who lived with werewolves, there had never been a need. Given that Stiles wasn't human, taking him to the doctor sounded ludicrous, but he insisted. Talking seemed to make his health deteriorate before their eyes, but Stiles managed to explain that his best friend's mom would know what to do and to ask for Melissa McCall once they arrived.

The nurse who appeared when they repeated the name at the hospital was a slight woman with dark hair and a worried expression. Completely human as far as Derek could tell. Then again, Stiles had seemed human too.

"What's wrong with him?" she asked, already looking Stiles over. Derek had Stiles' arm over his shoulder and his own arm wrapped around Stiles' waist, with most of Stiles' weight resting on him rather than the ground. Laura was on his other side and mirroring Derek.

"Hey Ms. Mom," Stiles slurred out, managing to lift his head and smile at her. He quickly lowered his head again, looking like he was going to be sick.

Laura took control. "He was fed poison and tortured," she said. "My sister is already calling the police on the people responsible, but Stiles needs medical attention."

In an instant, Melissa McCall took charge. The worry bled from her face and she was ordering people around and getting medicines and bandages and things Derek didn't even know what they were prepared. Other nurses came and helped Ms. McCall get Stiles onto a gurney and rolled away, leaving Derek and Laura to wait in uncomfortable chairs for Cora to finish with the police and for Ms. McCall to return with news.

...

...

The Hale family didn't get to visit Stiles while he was in the hospital. The police wanted statements on the incident from all three of them and they had to make sure their stories matched. And because Stiles was the son of the sheriff, the process seemed both faster and longer than usual. It wasn't just the sheriff that seemed irritated and worried though. It was the entire police department, everyone scurrying around trying to be helpful and throwing scathing looks at the door to the cells whenever they passed by.

"You picked a winner, Der," Cora whispered sarcastically. "We're gonna have cops keeping tabs on us from now until forever."

"That just means we be careful," Laura answered for him quietly. "Especially until Stiles is feeling better. It's nothing we haven't done before. Don't do anything suspicious and no one should look too close."

The hunters were shipped off - to prison or jail and on what charges, Derek didn't know and didn't care as long as they were gone - with speed and efficiency. But Stiles was restricted to family visits only, probably at the sheriff's insistence, so none of the Hales could get anywhere near Stiles to check on him.

Four days later, Stiles was home from the hospital but Derek still didn't see him. His dad had taken off work to stay home with Stiles until his son was able to take care of himself. Derek found out from Laura, who had called the hospital to check up, that Stiles had two bruised ribs, a lot of bruises and cuts all over, minor burns, and poisoning that had needed immediate care.

Within a week after Stiles was released, Derek was coming out of his skin. He ran every morning and worked out in the evening, shifted to beta form and ran at night. He did all the hardest work at the shop, trying to use up energy and stop the jittery feeling in his muscles. It wasn't helping. The longer he couldn't check on Stiles, talk to him, the worse he got.

Ironic that only a week and a half ago he'd been cursing Stiles and refusing to speak to him ever again.

...

...

The next time Derek didn't have work, Laura packed him in the car and drove through town like they were going shopping. Then she stopped in front of the Stilinski house, kicked him out, and peeled off before he could say a word. The noise made Sheriff Stilinski come outside to investigate and he paused in the doorway when he saw Derek.

Crossing his arms over his chest, the older male said, "I guess I was just wondering how long it would take for you to show up."

"Sir?" Derek asked while he was waved inside. He was expecting Derek?

"My son is capable of many things, but keeping his mouth shut isn't one of them," the sheriff said. "I was worried he would spend another ten years pining before asking you out, like with his last crush, but he surprised me." He grinned and Derek could see Stiles in him. "I think Scott nearly tried to kill him for talking about you so much. I've never heard him mooning over someone while throwing virtual grenades and gunfire."

Scott. Stiles' best friend Scott. Maybe Derek should meet this kid someday.

"But I assume you're here for my miscreant and not to listen to me talk." He pointed to the stairs. "First door on the left. Try not to let him get up. He's still healing but keeps wanting to go run a marathon." Derek barely had one foot on the stairs before the sheriff said, "Oh, and tell him he can take that ice off now."

As they parted ways, Derek heard him muttering about eyebrows under his breath but didn't stop to question it. Some things are better left unknown. And there were more important things to focus on.

Stiles' bedroom door was ajar and from there Derek could see Stiles lying in bed with a handheld game system, all his attention focused on the small screen. He was wearing lounge pants and a baggy shirt, and besides a few bandages on his arms and the remnants of his black eye, Stiles looked like nothing had ever happened. He smelled like medicine and ointment though, proving he was still recovering.

"Your dad says you can take the ice off."

Stiles jumped so bad he dropped his game. They both winced as it bounced off his chest, though Stiles' was accompanied by a groan and whispered curse.

"Dude. Warning," he hissed out, face pinched as he refrained from touching his chest.

"Sorry."

With a shake of his head, Stiles reached up under his shirt and pulled out a cold pack, tossing it onto the floor at the side of his bed. He sat up and looked up at Derek, nervousness hiding in his eyes and the way his heart skipped.

"I wasn't expecting you to come visit," Stiles noted.

Derek wasn't sure how to respond to that since he hadn't actually intended to come over. He had sort of been waiting for Stiles to reach out to him again first.

"What are you?" Derek asked before he could really think about it. "You're not a werewolf, but you're not human."

Stiles ran a hand through his hair and cast his eyes down to his knee. "Uh...See, I don't really know the answer to that." He held his hands up before Derek could say anything. "You're right. I'm not normal. I just...it started happening when I turned thirteen. I was running around the woods with Scott one day and then suddenly I was a wolf instead of a boy."

Derek pushed the door almost completely shut and then moved closer to the bed, but not all the way. "Does your dad know?"

A nod. "He said it came from my mom's family." He tilted his head to the side with a speculative look on his face. "People who had two selves."

As if a dam had opened, Stiles began to talk. He told Derek all about the first time he transformed in front of Scott. How his dad had found out because he had asked 'Do you feel any different now that you're a teenager?' and Stiles had a panic attack and changed and cried until his dad calmed him down enough to change back. How the wolf was Stiles and yet not, they were the same and yet different. How he was calmer and more agile as the red wolf, had sharper senses and more speed and strength, but no more than a normal wolf would have. He was either a normal human or a normal wolf, no special powers.

He explained how emotions and thoughts were different from one him to the next and tried to describe how he was split in two and yet whole at the same time. How he sometimes thought the wolf was the physical form of his spirit not trapped in his body, but sometimes he wasn't sure. He didn't know anyone else like him and had no one to ask about it.

He told Derek about the energy humming under his skin and how letting go and transforming was the only way to release it, a fond smile on his face as he described running as his second self. It was a feeling Derek could understand completely, knowing the wolf was right under his own skin and always begging to be released. But while his wolf was dangerous, Stiles' wolf just seemed to want to be.

"But you knew I was a wolf," Derek said and couldn't help the slight accusatory tone. "Why didn't you tell me all of this before?"

"I was going to tell you at three months," Stiles admitted with a faint flush high in his cheeks and unable to meet Derek's eyes. "I couldn't bring you home because I was worried dad may let something slip, and I couldn't introduce you to Scott because, I mean he's a great friend, but I _know_ he would've let the cat out of the bag, irony notwithstanding. And I really like you and I wanted to share it with you but I've been hiding that part of me for almost a decade. It was hard working up the courage to just...come out. Which is weird for me because I've never had to come out to anyone before, for anything."

Derek shook his head and sat on the bed near Stiles. "I was going to tell you about werewolves at three months."

Stiles grinned. "Well now three months can be dinner with my dad, and probably Scott and his mom too since they're practically my family and they know about me too." The grin faded. "If...I mean...If we're still, you know, a thing."

Derek thought about it. He had been angry with Stiles because Stiles had kept a big secret from him, but they both had secret parts of themselves that they had been waiting to reveal. He'd been upset that Stiles had known about werewolves and still kept quiet. But if the tables had been flipped, how easy would it have been for Derek to admit he was a werewolf if Stiles had told him he had the ability to become a red wolf at will? He would've thought about the differences between them, how a werewolf was much more dangerous and uncontrollable. He would've held back. Derek didn't know what Stiles' reasoning was for keeping quiet after he knew they were both supernatural, but there was no doubt in his mind that the reasons were many.

Was there anything else he was upset with Stiles about? Not really. Sometimes he was too noisy or annoying, but those were also qualities that Derek enjoyed because they made up for his typical lack of conversational skills. And Stiles always made Derek feel like he could have a life again after the loss of his family. As both Stiles and the red wolf, Stiles had made Derek feel alive, leaving guilt and trouble behind, opening up room for happiness and hope. Was the initial anger over Stiles' secret worth giving up all the good that came with that secret?

He nodded. "Yes. We're still 'a thing'." And he proved it with a kiss.

...

...

Dinner with Stiles, the sheriff, Ms. McCall, and Scott was awkward but satisfying, and Derek got invited to Sunday dinner at the Stilinski house whenever he wanted. Melissa gave Stiles a checkup while she was there and Derek flashed his eyes at Scott, who reached for his inhaler.

Just before the next full moon, Cora came home with the bombshell that Malia was a werecoyote. Where Derek was confused, Laura just gave a smirk that showed she'd known all along. And really, life in Beacon Hills was becoming much more complicated than Derek had ever thought it could be, especially for such a small town. But that meant that, the night of the full moon, when the Hales let themselves become giant wolves to run around the woods out of sight of humans, their running pack was just a little bigger.

Malia was smaller than Stiles. Her body was covered in grey fur tinted white that made her look like fog, but with faint red socks and ears. The red wolf yipped joyfully at not being the smallest and he and Malia hit it off instantly, seeing who could make the most racket and catch the most squirrels and pulling on each other's tails.

Including Cora and Laura - and a coyote he barely knew - in his time with Stiles the wolf had been odd at first, but Derek was glad to not have to choose between the most important people in his life. Plus, watching Stiles nip at Cora's ears and then dart out of reach before she could retaliate was entertaining. The entire pack ran and played and howled at the moon and each other until just before dawn, when they collapsed in a tired pile on the outcropping of rock that overlooked the town.

Pack.

Laura would later talk to Derek and Cora about expanding the pack, being on the lookout around town for people who would be good candidates as wolves. A year after they arrived, Scott would be the first to volunteer. Others would follow. The Hale pack would never be as large as it had been before the fire, but it would grow to a decent size. There would be other threats from hunters, both professional and bumbling wannabes, that they would have to overcome together. And other mythical creatures would wander in from time to time and the Hale pack would handle them as well. But that was in the future. For now, Derek had his sisters, Malia, and Stiles.

For now, Derek was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you care, I thought I'd include the wolf pictures I based the pack descriptions on:  
> Laura - http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131208034710/wolvesofthebeyond/images/2/24/Brown-wolf-wallpaper-1.jpg  
> Cora - http://www.callipygia600.com/allpictures/birds/nonbirds/images/wolf_lobo.jpg  
> Derek - http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140626223813/packs-wikia/images/a/a3/Soramai2.jpg  
> Stiles - http://img-cache.cdn.gaiaonline.com/ae524060f9421e8dba55aac97530eee9/http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj80/Icefirethewarrior/Beasts/red_wolf-1.jpg  
> Malia - http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/005/cache/coyote-glancing_510_600x450.jpg


End file.
